


Toroweap

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-03
Updated: 2007-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:02:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They spend a night in the desert after a particularly rough hunt, with nothing but rattlesnakes and falling stars for company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toroweap

Dean wakes up a couple hours outside of St. George.

Sam is standing by the side of the road, taking a break to get rid of his coffee and stretch his legs. He hears the car door slam but he doesn't turn around.

"Dude, what the fuck?" Dean's footsteps crunch loudly on the gravel. "Where the hell are we?"

The sun is blinding and hot, and it feels good on his neck and shoulders. There isn't a cloud on the sky.

Sam shrugs and waves his hand vaguely. "Between here and there, give or take a few miles."

"Very funny. Seriously, Sam." Dean stands beside him and pulls off his jacket; there's already sweat staining his t-shirt and beading on his skin. "Any particular reason we're stopped in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere?"

There's nothing around them except squat piñons and junipers, wiry cacti and sharp yuccas, smooth rocks and the rough, narrow road.

Sam turns toward the car and gives Dean a crooked smile. "No particular reason. I just thought we could use a break."

Raising on eyebrow skeptically, Dean repeats, "A break? From what, modern civilization and air conditioning?"

He's squinting in the sunlight and his skin is pale, too pale. Sam tries to remember how long it's been since they've spent a day outside. The last few months feel like an endless string of long nights and darkened motel rooms, crawling into bed at dawn and crawling out at dusk, one midnight hunt after another until they'd become nocturnal without even noticing, shying from the sun as much as the things they kill.

"Pretty much, yeah," Sam replies. "I thought it would be nice."

Dean stares at him. "_Christo._"

Sam laughs. "Shut up. C'mon, we've got a ways to go."

Still grumbling under his breath, Dean follows him back to the car. "What's all that shit in the back seat?"

Dean had slept right through stops at the grocery store, outdoor shop and tire place, snoring peacefully in the car while Sam made the most of a Mr. Ernesto Veracruz's platinum Visa.

"Water and supplies," Sam answers, opening the door.

Dean stops short a few feet from the car. "We're going someplace that doesn't even have _water_?"

"In the car in ten seconds or you're walking."

"Jesus Christ." But Dean does as he's told.

Sam settles behind the wheel and points out, "Not here, no, but since you mention it--he did spend forty days in the desert without complaining. You haven't even managed five minutes."

"You're a fucking lunatic." Dean tosses his jacket into the back seat and rolls down his window. "I'm never letting you drive again. From now on, every time we go someplace I'm tying you up and stashing you in the trunk so this doesn't happen. You're not allowed to make any more decisions. Ever."

Sam turns the key and the engine roars to life. "Whatever you say, unbeliever."

~

The thing in St. George shouldn't have been a big deal. Angry spirit, wrongful death, salt-and-burn, the kind of hunt they can usually do in their sleep with their hands tied behind their backs.

But this one--this fucker was nasty.

"What did you see?" he asked Dean, after the third night. They had investigated the deaths for a week before they got a trail, and they tracked the thing for two nights before they found it--or, if they were being honest, until it found them and sent scurrying with their tails between their legs.

"Transvestite clown," Dean said promptly. "I think it was gunning for you instead of me and got a little confused."

And he refused to say anything more.

~

Forty minutes later when they pass the sign that marks the border of the park, Sam glances across the seat. Dean is staring resolutely through the windshield, still sulking like a brat, but he's chewing on his lower lip and his expression is a little more relaxed, a little less suspicious.

"I thought there'd be a lot more Winnebagos and yuppies with cameras stuck to their faces," he says. They haven't passed another car since they left the paved highway, and since Dean woke up they've only rumbled over one cattle guard. No buildings, no houses, nothing but barbed wire and empty desert.

Sam hides a smile of triumph. "Hey, man, you want the Disneyland version or the real deal?"

"I want a bed and running water."

"Don't be such a candyass. I'm sure your hair will still look pretty in the morning."

"Fuck you."

"Aw, shucks. I bet you say that to all the girls."

When Sam looks over again, Dean is resting his elbow on the open window, his head propped against his hand and the lines around his eyes crinkling in the beginnings of a smile.

~

On the fifth night, when the thing found them again, Sam didn't see a transvestite clown.

"Well?"

His nose was bleeding from his face-plant at the bottom of the stairs and he had splinters in places he didn't want to think about. "Well, what?"

Dean was nothing more than a shadow, warm and familiar as he bent down to help Sam stand up. "What did you see?"

Sam swayed unsteadily and Dean grabbed him, his hands a little rough, and rearranged Sam like a marionette until his arm was slung over Dean's shoulder and they were stumbling toward the door.

"Nothing," Sam said. "I didn't see anything."

Dean didn't speak again until they were back at the motel. Sam washed his face and stripped off his bloody shirt, kicked off his shoes and dropped his jean in a heap on the floor. When he came out of the bathroom, the air conditioner was running full blast and the blinds were shut against the sunrise. Dean was already in bed, lying on his back with his hands behind his head.

Sam crawled between the sheets of the other bed, curled onto his side and rested his head on his arm, watching Dean across the dark room. Dean shifted slightly and brought one arm up, ran his hand through his hair, and glanced at Sam.

"Liar," he muttered.

Sam closed his eyes, but all he saw was fire and smoke, maggots and blood, and Dean's crumpled body too silent and too still, and he lay awake listening to the air conditioner rattled for a long time.

~

The campground is empty.

"This is it?" The door creaks as Dean shoves it open. "This is where we're stopping?"

"Can't go much further," Sam says.

It's even hotter outside the car, the sun burning overhead and heat rolling off the rocks in shimmering waves. Sweat trickles down his back between his shoulder blades, and Sam starts to wonder if maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

But Dean is walking away from the car, hands tucked casually in his pockets, and when he's about fifty feet away he stops abruptly and leans forward.

"Holy _fuck_." Without turning around, he waves Sam over to him. "Dude, you gotta check this out."

Smiling, Sam wanders over to join Dean at the edge--and yeah, okay, that is pretty impressive.

"Three thousand feet," he says, remembering what the guy at the outdoor store in St. George had told him. "Sheer drop to the river."

The river is a narrow ribbon far below, bright greenish-blue below the brilliant red and orange rocks washed with sunlight. Sam can hear the distant rumble of the falls downriver, mingling with the whisper of a light breeze chasing over the rock and through the scattered trees behind them.

"It's alright," Dean admits. "I'm not sure I'd call it _grand_, though. More _largish_. Or _slightly big for a crack_."

Sam rolls his eyes. "You would know about big cracks."

"Takes one to know one," Dean retorts.

"That doesn't even make sense."

"Someday when you're all grown-up I'll explain it to you, Sammy." Dean looks down at the river again, his expression thoughtful. "It would really suck to go over the edge, though."

"Whatever, Thelma. I still have the car keys."

"Don't need a car to fly like an eagle, man."

A pause, a twitch in the corner of his eyes and curve of his lips, and Dean lunges at Sam and grabs his arms, fake-shoves him toward the edge of the cliff.

"Don't fall, clumsy."

Sam propellers his arms and catches his balance, grabs Dean's arms and pushes him away. Dean cackles as he stumbles backwards. Sam whirls around and charges, catches Dean around the waist and tackles him to the ground. They land on the stone with painful grunts that turn into gasping, cursing laughs as Dean flails his arms and legs wildly. Sam dodges the blows, pins Dean to the ground, and sits on him.

"Dude." Dean's voice is a breathless croak. "Crushing me, birdbrain."

Sam scowls and looks down at Dean, shading his eyes from the sun. "Birdbrain?"

"One of those really big birds. The prehistoric kind."

Sam stares.

"Terror birds, in South America," Dean explains, with a wave of his hand to indicate that Sam should know all this already. He wriggles beneath Sam but can't move. "You know. Ten feet tall, kill you with their beaks."

"I think you need to stop watching the Discovery Channel and go back to watching porn."

"I think you need to stop crushing the life out of me with your inhuman bulk."

With a sigh, Sam stands up, accidentally-on-purpose kicking Dean's legs as he does so. "Fine, wimp. Let's go."

"Go where? We just got here."

"No, I mean, let's _go_." Sam sweeps his arms wide, a gesture meant to encompass the vastness of the desert and the emptiness of the world, the grandness of the canyon and the distance of the horizon. "Let's go exploring."

Dean squints up at him in disbelief. His face is no longer pale, his hair is sticking up all over the place like a startled porcupine, his clothes are already rumpled and dusty, and he looks like he can't decide if he wants to laugh or throw himself into the canyon to escape the crazy person looming over him. He says, "It's two hundred degrees out here, and you want to _explore_. You're a fucking lunatic."

Sam grins. "That's the spirit."

~

The third and final time the thing found them, they killed it.

Afterward, stumbling back to the car bruised and bloody, Dean muttered, "Nasty son of a bitch." He fumbled with the keys and dropped them, groaned in pain as he bent to pick them up.

Sam slumped against the passenger side door and leaned down to press his face against the metal roof. It was cool and smooth, and he thought he could sleep there if Dean would just agree not to drive away. "Yeah," he said. He sorted through the scattered thoughts in his mind, looking for the one he'd meant to ask Dean before they went in, before the thing had jumped them again, before they'd been separated and lost in a labyrinth of images both familiar and terrible. "You think it was doing, I dunno. Looking into our thoughts, picking out the worst nightmares?"

Dean hesitated before answering. "Greatest fears," he said.

Sam wondered why it made a difference, but he only said, "Yeah."

"Nasty fucker," Dean said again. "Let's get out of here."

The job was over and they were still alive. Sam knew they wouldn't be coming back to St. George any time soon, but he had an idea about where they might go next.

~

It's too hot to explore very much. They wander along the edge of the canyon for a ways. Dean looks under every rock for rattlesnakes--"I hear they taste good," he says in perfect seriousness when Sam asks, "better than that granola crap I know you packed,"--and Sam looks up at the sky. He's never seen anything so blue and clear, not even a wisp of cloud marring it, and he can see the sun burning even when he closes his eyes.

When they're hot enough and tired enough they head back to the campground and spend the afternoon sprawled in the meager shade of some spindly trees, guzzling down water and talking about places they've never been and things they've never seen, whether or not they would eat giant beetles in they were explorers lost in the jungle and how cool it would be if there were still dinosaurs lurking somewhere in the world. A ranger in a park service Jeep drops by the campground and Dean asks him if he's ever eaten rattlesnake, and that somehow turns into an hour-long conversation about the origin of the Grand Canyon and the one-armed man who first rafted it, about summer in the desert and the ranger's extensive animal skull collection, about tourists who break their legs hiking down to the river and this famous old guy from Kanab who's been struck by lightning eleven times.

Sam lies on his back and listens idly, smiling to himself. He hears the Jeep rumble to life and drive away, and a few seconds later Dean is dropping to the ground beside him.

"That is one crazy dude," Dean says, but he's amused, almost admiring.

"Takes one to know one," Sam replies sleepily.

"He says on his days off he likes to just take a bottle of water and walk into the desert as far as he can go. No trails or anything, just walking." Even with his eyes closed, Sam knows that Dean is shaking his head. "Says he never takes pictures because he likes to be the only one who sees what he sees. Crazy."

Sam murmurs something in agreement, not even bothering with whole words. He knows he's falling asleep but he doesn't fight it, just lets himself drifts away and hopes that the shade doesn't shift so much that he wakes up red as a lobster.

He sleeps until the sun starts going down. When he wakes up, Dean is sitting beside him, eating with obvious, noisy enjoyment. He's raided the cooler and the box of food, and he's got a bag of chips and a huge sandwich.

"Food?" he offers, his mouth full, when he sees that Sam is awake.

Sam hasn't realized how hungry he is until Dean says it, but he grunts in assent, the verbal communication part of his mind still mostly asleep, and build himself a sandwich as big as Dean's. He feels the tap of something cold and wet on his arm: Dean offering him a beer, not as cold as it could be and dripping from the melted ice in the cooler.

It's too warm to need a fire and there are no artificial lights anywhere. The sun goes down, the sky turns from blue to black, and the night fills with stars, more stars than he's ever seen. They've moved their old army blanket out from under the tree, onto the smooth rock not twenty feet from the edge of the canyon, and staring up at the sky Sam feels like the entire universe is before him, too vast and too distant to contemplate, but so close he can feel it in the night breeze on his skin.

But he doesn't say that out loud; he knows Dean will only laugh.

"Hey, Dean, what did it..." Sam trails off, takes another sip of beer.

Lying on his back with his hands behind his head, Dean stirs and waits but says nothing.

Overhead, a tiny flare of light streaks across the sky. Nothing but a speck of dust burning in the upper atmosphere, but Sam makes a wish anyway, closing his eyes and concentrating like he did when he was a kid.

"So what did you see?" Sam asks, opening his eyes. "What did it show you?"

He doesn't have to explain what he means. Worst nightmare, greatest fear, it doesn't make a difference. Their bruises are still fresh and their cuts still sting, and Sam can still feel the cold, aching, _wrongness_ of the thing reaching into his mind, whispering and taunting in his thoughts.

Dean takes his time answering. "Nothing I haven't seen before," he says finally.

Sam waits for him to return the question, ask what Sam had seen or crack a joke about it, but Dean is quiet for so long Sam starts to wonder if he's fallen asleep, or if he just doesn't need to ask because he already knows.

Then Dean swings his arm up, a sudden shadow of motion in the darkness, and says, "Look. Shooting star."

Sam doesn't try to find it. They're always gone too quickly, and it's Dean's turn to make a wish.


End file.
